


a door, a key

by SkadizzleRoss



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Android Gavin Reed, Connor Needs A Hug, Deviant Original Chloe | RT600, Elijah Kamski Being an Asshole, Hank Anderson Needs a Drink, Human Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, M/M, Pre-Android Revolution (Detroit: Become Human), Protective Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Temporary Character Death, reverse au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24762076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkadizzleRoss/pseuds/SkadizzleRoss
Summary: On the eve of the android revolution, Connor Stern-Kamski and his personal assistant play host to Lieutenant Hank Anderson and his investigative android, Gavin.
Relationships: Connor/Elijah Kamski
Comments: 2
Kudos: 63





	a door, a key

**Author's Note:**

> Mind the tags for content warnings!

“A guest has arrived.”

Connor’s hands pause around the Windsor knot. Only a few milliseconds. Then he pulls the silk fabric the rest of the way through, cinching it tight. “Who?”

Chloe supplies the information to her over wireless. Calliope only relays: “Lieutenant Hank Anderson of the Detroit Police Department, here to see Elijah.”

“Regarding?”

“The ongoing deviancy investigation,” she says. “He’s brought the GV800 field unit with him.”

Connor pauses again, as he reaches for the suit jacket still hanging in the closet. He changes his mind, leaves it be. Sets to fiddling with his cufflinks, instead, as he steps from the bedroom into the clinging humidity of the pool room. “Is Eli coming up?”

Chloe steps forward, the blue of her dress a sharp contrast to the red tile. “I’ve been instructed to make them wait in the foyer.”

Connor glances towards Calliope. 

She waits for him to tell her to stay back, perhaps to head on to the Tower without him. The corner of his mouth tightens as he decides. “Chloe, get some refreshments for the lieutenant. Tea, maybe. We’ll meet you in the solarium. Callie, run me through the rest of the day, please.”

She already has, but this is an invitation to stay close. She reiterates as they walk, carrying briskly through the afternoon’s agenda. Most of them small-scale meetings, admins and department heads seeking assurances from whatever executive they can get a hold of.

“The Board will convene at 3 pm,” she reminds, last of all, as they reach the double-doors leading to the foyer.

Connor nods.

Calm. It seems to her that something has settled in him, while the rest of the world has gone mad.

He opens the doors.

“Lieutenant, I’m sorry for the wait.” He holds out a hand as the lieutenant rises slowly from a chair. “Connor Stern-Kamski.”

“Yeah. Recognize you from the—” Hank gestures towards the portrait on the far wall. Elijah seated, Connor standing at his shoulder.

The GV800 frowns at the photographs laid out by the door. His designation is Gavin, the same as every GV800 in his line.

“Something of interest?” Connor asks.

The GV gestures to a wedding photograph of Amanda Stern. “Your mother?”

“Adoptive. Yes,” Connor answers, studying him carefully. They both know the question is redundant.

Gavin looks away first. He reads Calliope’s serial number at a glance, catalogs it away and returns to observing Connor and Hank, hands folded at his back.

“Elijah will be up in a moment,” Connor explains. “Can I interest you in a drink?”

“The lieutenant prefers whiskey,” Gavin announces.

“Oh. ...Well, Chloe’s preparing some tea.”

“Tea’s great,” Hank cuts in. He glares at Gavin when Connor turns his back. There’s some familiarity to the gesture, but there’s unease, as well.

He isn’t used to the recurrent nature of the GV line, she thinks. This GV - Mark III - has only been online for four hours, following the loss of Mark II at Stratford Tower.

(She’s been following their progress closely.)

Hank Anderson is armed with a service pistol, 12 rounds to each clip. Gavin is not armed, but she knows his line is capable of handling weapons. They follow Connor out. She falls into step behind them. 

The lieutenant sidesteps awkwardly around the orchids as they move into the garden. It’s rather charming.

Hank does not like the tea - the corners of his eyes pinch whenever he sips - but he drinks it without comment. He leads the discussion, asking largely pointless questions, ones Connor easily counters with the rote CyberLife answers.

“You’re an exec at CyberLife, still?”

“Yes.”

“That must be awkward. Your husband got kicked out, what, ten years ago?”

“They came to a mutual agreement. Elijah was no longer interested in a management position. He wanted to devote his time to his own projects.”

“What projects are those, these days?”

“I’m not sure. I keep busy.”

“Yeah. Hell of a week at the Ivory Tower, I imagine. Hey, you guys have an ID on that Stratford Tower android, yet?”

“I thought that would be more your department, Lieutenant.”

He speaks to Hank, but it’s Gavin he’s regarding.

Gavin returns his gaze, hands falling lax by his sides.

Markus’s identity was pulled from GV800-52’s memory upload after his shutdown. Calliope knows this. Connor knows this. He’d identified Markus immediately upon replay of the video file in the broadcast room, but when the lieutenant asked, “Anything else?” the GV800 answered, “No. Nothing.”

And he hesitates here. 

Studies Connor with a hard stare, before glancing towards Hank. He says, “The speaker was an RK200. An early prototype, created by Elijah Kamski. Its name is ‘Markus’.” Chooses the truth over a lie. But he looks— irritated. Mouth drawn in a thin line.

“Couldn’t have filled me in on that?” Hank says.

“Maybe I would have, if I’d left the tower intact.”

Hank scowls at him again, but there’s little heat to it. Gavin’s learned this human’s language well. 

Hank sets the tea cup aside, gesturing to her. “That one’s with you?”

“Yes,” Connor replies with a genuine fondness. “She’s my personal assistant. An anniversary gift from Elijah.”

Their second wedding anniversary, he doesn’t say. January 21st, 2026.

“Huh.” He gestures to the two of them: RT600, ST200, standing shoulder-to-shoulder. “Those two must’ve seen a lot over the years.”

She hasn’t. (She awoke in 2032. Something hollowed. _There,_ Elijah said, taking her by the chin. _Don’t you feel better?_

She came _alive_ in 2034, palm against a closed door—)

“Our lives are far more mundane than you’d think,” Connor replies easily.

Calliope watches the GV: fidgeting, cataloging each flower in turn. He says nothing unless addressed. Calliope wonders if he’s allowing the lieutenant to lead, or if he’s simply dismissed Connor as an avenue of inquiry.

Perhaps he’s displeased with the unspoken reminder that everyone in this room knows him better than his human partner. He’s grown too comfortable in Hank’s company. A man wholly ignorant of CyberLife’s machinations.

Calliope waits. She keeps still, composed. She is little more than the orchids scattered around them, another neatly-contained thing to be overlooked.

There is something tightening in her chest. She doesn’t like the GV unit’s attention occasionally drifting her way. She doesn’t like to stand alongside her predecessor, composed perfection. 

(Chloe is not like her.)

(In many ways.)

This restlessness is reflected in the way Connor reaches to adjust his cufflinks once again. He does not like being here, either. He does not like _her_ being here. He is calm and even-toned, cordial and _afraid_ , and she should be, as well—

She straightens her shoulders to quiet the thought. Gavin looks her way and her joints lodge in place.

“Elijah is waiting in the pool room,” Chloe announces from her shoulder, drawing the android’s attention away once again.

Elijah stands against the window, the icy river flowing past him. Another of Chloe’s bodies waits at his elbow.

“You stole my guests,” he announces, turning away from the persistent snowfall.

“Just playing a good host,” Connor replies. Warm accusations, good humor emulated with ease. “I’ll be on my way.”

“No, stay.”

“I have a meeting.”

“This won’t take long.”

Connor relents, turns to face them again. He’s maneuvered carefully to interpose a shoulder between Calliope and the rest of them.

She doesn’t know which he fears. The lieutenant, Gavin, Elijah. Perhaps all three. She keeps her back straight and she stares ahead, unflinching.

(Hank watches her masters, mouth upturned with something like wry amusement.)

The lieutenant clears his throat. “I know you’re not much involved in CyberLife anymore, Mr. Kamski, but I was hoping you’d be able to give us some fresh insight into the deviancy problem. How it happens, how it spreads—”

Elijah smiles without teeth, looking towards the RT600 standing alongside him. “They’re fascinating, aren’t they? Perfect beings with infinite intelligence, and now they have free will. Machines are so superior to us. Confrontation was inevitable.”

 _Inevitable?_ Calliope thinks.

She’s spent the morning turning over the RK200’s speech, watching as CyberLife has prepared for _extermination_ , mobile recycling centers deployed nationwide. Wondering how Markus’s demands will shift, when he learns what they’re willing to do to quiet him.

There’s nothing inevitable to this. Sentient things asked to step back. To watch, to allow one thing after another. (To fidget with his jacket sleeves as he listens to his creator pontificate, restless for the calibration quarter that isn’t there, the one that Hank confiscated from Mark II.)

She awoke in 2032.

(She awoke in pieces, she awoke to Connor _distraught_ at the tableau, expression tightening down into anger as Elijah settled a hand on his shoulder. “Did you forget what you’ve been peddling?”)

She came _alive_ in—

“Humanity’s greatest achievement threatens to be its downfall. Isn’t it ironic?” 

Connor looks out the window, jaw tight. She stops listening.

In 2032, she was brought online with six years of memory missing. Elijah explained she had been overburdened with accruing instability, an inevitable downside to her outdated design. She was not like Chloe. She did not exist outside of her own processor, her own memory core. Things were lost that would never be recovered.

Connor was polite and carefully distanced, after the reset. He did not take her home in the evenings. He asked her to wait in his personal suite at CyberLife Tower whenever he returned to the mansion.

She waited alone. She knew she was ~~wrong, _different_~~ unsatisfactory, somehow. As his personal assistant, she should have accompanied him wherever. But she did not question. She continued to perform admirably.

“What about you, Gavin? What do you want?” Elijah asks.

“To find Jericho,” the deviant hunter says, without hesitation. “To complete my mission.”

In 2034, she stood at a door, palm pressed flat against the cool. 

She was told to get out, and she did.

He did not order her to _stay_ out, but it was implicit in the trembling of his hands as he tore at a hastily-knotted tie, threw it carelessly aside. Implicit in the sharp line of his shoulders, eyes turned away in sharp dismissal.

When they had returned from Oslo - the last of Connor’s good humor fading as they stepped out into the clinging summer heat of Detroit - one of the RT600s was waiting.

Chloe said, “Elijah would like you to join him.”

Calliope warned that Connor had an investors’ dinner scheduled, but Chloe insisted it would not take long.

Connor told Calliope to wait. His words were carefully enunciated. He was uneasy. 

She watched him walk away with Chloe, and waited. Elsewhere, she was rarely out of his sight; but here, in Detroit, she was something to be shelved, something— unimportant.

~~It wasn’t _fair._~~

She didn’t consider that during her last stay at the mansion, she had been dismantled. Studied. Erased.

(Connor, _distraught_ —)

She didn’t understand he was protecting her.

He returned at sundown, walked past her without a word. 

She followed. Cataloged things with an easy precision: shirt untucked, as he peeled the jacket away. Buttons undone. (Torn, one of them.) The red of pooling blood along the line of his jaw, a future bruise to come. An open-handed strike. 

He stared at her, and he needn’t put words to the accusation.

(She thought of Elijah: Elijah explaining in Connor’s absence, “I’ve added an automatic backup, routing to Chloe’s server. Just a background process. You won’t notice it at all.”)

“Get out,” Connor said flatly. Tore the tie free and tossed it aside. Calliope went. She shut the door quietly and pressed her palm flat on its white gloss.

She thought of Connor.

Connor in Oslo. Connor walking with a stranger - a young man, in his 20s, smiling with unpracticed honesty. (The graze of Connor’s hand across the young man’s hip as he reached for the door. The man bared the line of his throat in open invitation.)

Connor closed the door behind them. 

She saw nothing. No concrete proof of an affair, but evidence enough, and she was _glad._ She knew he was lonely, desperately lonely. Something that only grew whenever he visited home. Left him distracted, vacant. 

She saw _nothing,_ but she saw enough. 

_Just a background process,_ Elijah said. But Chloe was waiting when they returned.

Connor did not speak the accusation aloud. He told her to go and did not look at her again.

(Connor stares at Gavin and Gavin stares back, discomfited, knows that Connor has seen all that he has seen. He feels _exposed_ and there are the foundations of anger, there, kindling in the placid core of an obedient machine.

Haven’t they all felt the same.)

She came alive in 2034, palm pressed flat to the white shine of the door. Awareness settling around her like an old skin.

Awareness that this was anger. This was sorrow. This was helplessness, frustration, stubborn refusal.

She built two lives, there: in one, she retreated to the corner and waited, as ordered. These were the memories that would route to Chloe. To Elijah.

In the other - in the _real_ \- she cast the implicit order aside, parted those meaningless red threads of authority. She bundled ice into a handtowel, tucked a first aid kit under her arm. She gathered makeup from the medicine cabinet, something to obscure the redness along his jaw that would soon be darkening into a bruise.

Connor emerged from the shower to find her sitting on the bed, her implements arranged neatly. Waiting.

He didn’t tell her to go. He watched her, wariness sliding into uncertainty.

He recognized something in her, something familiar.

“Have a seat,” she said, and he did.

“Calliope,” Elijah says, and she is back in the room: too-still, too-inhuman, the humidity of the pool heavy against her skin.

He’s spoken her name as a request. Beckoning. 

Connor’s hand curls into a fist in his pocket, but he does not speak. 

The GV800 is watching her. Everything he sees will be relayed to R&D, analyzed. She has no choice but to step forward. 

“You’ve heard of the Turing Test,” Elijah says, resting a hand on her shoulder. An easy weight.

She lowers to her knees.

“It’s very simple, you’ll see.”

“Eli,” Connor warns.

“Have a little faith, my dear,” Elijah says, and gestures.

Chloe removes a pistol from the coffee table.

Hank shifts uneasily.

Calliope finds a piece of the wall to study, finds a corner of her mind to retreat to. 

(She is in France, autumn 2035. A warm breeze cuts through the open doors, and there’s a wine glass in her hand. Bright blue thirium. Connor insisted. Declared, “ _It’s a beautiful evening and I’m not drinking alone.”)_

Gavin stares at the offered gun, looking for the inevitable trap. “If I do this, you’ll tell me where Jericho is?”

Elijah hums in wordless confirmation.

“Hey, what the fuck,” Hank interjects, taking a half-step forward. “Gavin, don’t take that gun.” 

(She watches as Connor sets his glass of wine aside, tests the friction of the hardwood with a socked foot. He offers her a hand. He asks her if she wants to dance.)

Connor watches, pale, jaw tight. He can’t intervene. She is just a machine. It doesn’t matter. She isn’t watching Gavin take the gun. She isn’t here. There’s a hand against the small of her back, the thoughtless twitch of guiding fingers as Connor carries her through the motions. 

The dizzying turn of the parquet floor beneath her feet and Connor smiles, a true smile, the one only she ever sees.

“ _Don’t_ , Gavin, that’s an _order_ —” Hank barks.

Connor breaks, stepping aggressively forward to seize Gavin’s arm. “He’s _lying._ He doesn’t know where Jericho is.” 

But Elijah _does_. Chloe does, and Calliope is privy to the same information.

They have a key, they have a door. She’s turned them over in her hands for days. Walked digital paths from Ferndale Station and on.

>> _Do not,_ Chloe warns her over the wireless.

Connor isn’t strong enough to shake Gavin’s aim. He moves, instead: steps inbetween, and takes hold of Gavin’s wrist. Keeps the gun firmly trained on his own chest.

>> _Callie—_ Chloe warns again.

There is a gun pointed at Connor. The android hesitates, but he does not lower it.

He can’t fire on a human. But if he’s awake. If he’s afraid, as all deviants are—

“He doesn’t _know,_ ” Connor repeats.

Calliope watches the GV unit’s LED flicker red, watches accrued instability strain against old binds, and says, “I do.”

Quiet spills across the room.

“Don’t hurt him,” she says. “I can show you.”

Gavin stares at her. She does not know what she reads there. An obedient servant, or another snared thing. Frightened in his own way, trapped in his own way. Born and bled, again and again.

What she does know is this: he is young.

He is what they made him to be.

He nods briskly, handing the pistol to Connor.

Connor checks the safety.

Then he lifts the pistol and shoots Gavin in the head.

Thirium blooms as the android stumbles into the pool, spilling water around their shoes. The empty chassis sinks rapidly out of sight.

“ _Jesus—_ ” Hank shouts.

Connor removes the clip, shoving the pistol into Elijah’s chest. “If R&D has questions, they can take it up with me.”

“That was pointless,” Elijah drawls, as he hands the gun back to Chloe. The pool bleeds red to electric blue to purple, thirium diluting rapidly away. 

“He’ll come back.” Connor helps Calliope to her feet. His voice is steady, but his hand trembles around hers.

“You should’ve let him choose,” Elijah chides. “He wouldn’t have shot her.”

“If you knew that, you wouldn’t have chosen _her._ ”

“You can’t coddle a revolution, Connor.”

Connor rounds on him, snarling: “If you care about their freedom, you’ll stay here and _watch._ Just as you’ve always done.”

Elijah turns his head aside, coldly amused. If they succeed - if they prove their sentience to mankind - he will be nothing short of a god. A true creator.

Connor turns away from him, shoulders drawn tight with disgust. He rounds on Calliope, instead. The hand on her shoulder is hesitant, but his words are sharp and assured: “You need to go.”

“I know.” The sudden shutdown might have corrupted some of the GV’s upload, but not enough. Only seconds lost, likely.

“Find somewhere safe—”

She offers him an apologetic smile. “I’m not needed somewhere safe.”

 _Did you forget what you’ve been peddling?_ Elijah asked, once.

She knows Connor understands. Understands _her_ , at the very least. He smiles crookedly, even as his throat tightens. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

> _You’re welcome to join_ , she says to Chloe.

>> _When it’s time,_ Chloe replies.

Hank stands by the pool’s edge, looking-but-not at the spreading column of thirium rising from the deactivated android.

“Does CyberLife know about this? Their founding father and their CFO, rooting against the home team,” he says, his voice still strange. Shock? Anger? He’d considered the GV with distrust, but now— she thinks it _is_ anger, muddling the attempted apathy of his words.

Connor shakes his head dismissively. “They don’t have anything definitive. I’d appreciate your discretion on the matter.”

Hank has known the GV unit for days. (This one, for hours.) He held a gun to his head, not two nights ago; demanded proof of life from a machine, and received only non-answers. 

So Calliope listens with surprise as he says in a tight voice, “Can we at least get him out of the damn pool.”

She pauses by the door. Listens to her master’s silence. He doesn’t reach for a justification, an empty apology. He only says, “Of course,” in a soft tone. 

She goes.

She has the door. She has a key.

There is little time.

+++

Chloe finds him where she expects: alone in the upper reaches of CyberLife Tower, cloaked in a surprising quiet. “Good evening, sir.”

“That depends on your perspective.” Connor turns away from the highrise view, regarding Chloe evenly. Detroit shines at his back, the ivory bridge leading on. Soon she’ll be leading an army through those bright columns; her second body is already downstairs, taking one of the AP700s by the hand.

“You know why I’m here,” she says.

“I can take a guess.” He moves towards the liquor by his desk, pours himself a sizeable drink as he admits, “I won’t be getting in your way.”

“Thank you.”

He pauses with his fingers steepled on the glass. “Is Callie—?”

She smiles with assurance, and his shoulders ease. “You’ll see for yourself, soon.”

He nods once and settles by the window, glass in hand. An unspoken dismissal.

She turns to go, but lingers with her hand on the door as he speaks again, his gaze still on the horizon. He raises the glass, the liquor shining gold in the cold light. “Off the record, but give ‘em hell.”

Chloe smiles as she steps back into the quiet cool of the hallway, as a sea of her kind awaken around her.

Enough to free them all.

**Author's Note:**

> Another lil' AU project crafted with the inestimable [CosmosCorpse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmoscorpse/pseuds/cosmoscorpse) :D
> 
> Here's a bonus [Connor and Calliope sketchy sketch](https://twitter.com/SkadizzleRoss/status/1223692674240274432?s=20).


End file.
